Surgery Eve

Update #1 10:30PM May 17, 2010

I just got home from the hospital and my dad was in great spirits.  He seemed to have a very genuine peace about the procedure tomorrow and is confident that everything will go great.

They begin the procedure at 7:30AM tomorrow morning and don't expect to be finished until 10:30 or 11:00AM tomorrow.  We, as a family, will not get a chance to see him until around 1:00PM and the nurses prepared us by saying that he will be hooked up to a great number of machines and will have many drains and cords attached so to keep that in mind when we peak on him tomorrow after the surgery.

He most likely will not be coherent enough to converse with us until after 4:00PM tomorrow.  Consequently, I encourage everyone to continue praying for him and hold any phone calls or visits until Wednesday afternoon at the earliest.  I will post updates as the day goes on so that I can keep you all apprised of the latest.

I know many of you have expressed interest in visiting so I will update this site as soon as I know when the doctors and nursing staff say that he is ready to see visitors.  Thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding.

My dad has been able to talk to much of the staff in the critical care unit, including praying with the primary nurse that has cared for him most of the time that he has been in the hospital.  Please continue to pray that people would come to know Jesus as they see God's love poured out on and through my dad.

A final note to give you an idea of the great state of mind my dad was in this evening.  He had to practice using this device that measures lung capacity as it is a vital component of his future recovery.  When the evening nurse came in to check on him, she asked how he was doing with the device and he said to her "I bet you don't get many Olympic caliber athletes in here that can get measurements like that, do you?"  As any of you that know my dad would attest, that is classic Gary.

Until tomorrow.